Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus

[angrybird]

I love my trips to this country so very much.

Right know you could have a luxury room at the Canal Grande in Venice for about 80€, regular price before COVID19 was 253€.

I need to convince the wife that we also need a trip to Italy this summer   

[coppice]

I love my trips to this country so very much.

Right know you could have a luxury room at the Canal Grande in Venice for about 80€, regular price before COVID19 was 253€.

Its a great time for long distance flights. Its easy to get a whole row to yourself, and sleep in comfort.

[angrybird]

Or better yet - Discounted upper class!  I absolutely love the premium cabins on the newer Airbus...  A350 and A380 are my favorite metal birds.  For the 10+ hour Asia flights it is mandatory 

[SiliconWizard]

A few schools have already been closed in France.

It is going to have a significant impact overall. For how long, I have no clue. I mostly work from "home" these days - but with some traveling. I have a lab at home. But no travel planned lately so far...

Speaking of masks, fun (if you can call it that) but absurd fact: there has been a hot topic very recently over here. Obviously masks are highly suggested as a means of protection, but at the same time, there's a law that forbids anyone to wear a mask in public areas (for dang security reasons as it hides your face). So no one really knows whether we can get out wearing one or not, but you're likely to get fined if you do, even though the ministry of health has told people to wear one at the slightest sign of cold/flu to protect others.

Even in China, AFAIK, they are allowed to wear masks even though mass surveillance is pervasive over there. So are we getting even more totalitarian than China is? Maybe.

[angrybird]

I thought that the established belief was that the masks only reduce the infected from spreading the infection as wide, but don't really serve to protect the uninfected wearing one due to the various infection vectors?

I'm saving my N95 masks for drywall and masonry work

[james_s]

Several of the large tech companies have closed their Seattle offices temporarily. I've actually gone into the office more this week than usual because the buses are empty and traffic is lighter than I've seen in 20 years, it's fantastic.

It isn't sustainable though, I bet after a few weeks people will start to get complacent again and return to normal routines even while the virus keeps spreading.

I do hope this spurs companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook to allow and even encourage people to work remotely on a regular basis. There are health benefits and environmental benefits to doing so and with most software jobs technology makes it unnecessary to be in the office every day. I come in for the meetings and face time, I get most of my real work done on my remote days. I've been sick way less than I was at my last job, I spend a lot less on transportation and my overall stress level is lower.

[EEVblog]

Dave can you tell me if the corona is spreading less in region like Australia where the temperature is higher than the north planet?
There are rumors high temperature will block the virus...

I've been thinking for some time now that must be a reason why we have had hardly any spread here.
We are so intimately tied to China and have such a massive Chinese population (especially students, we have 400,000 Chinese students here!) that we should have been hit very hard, but we haven't been.
Most of our cases have come from people coming from overseas, and in recent days from places like Iran and Italy, hence our new travel bans from these countries.
It just doesn't seem to be that infectious here.

[coppice]

Dave can you tell me if the corona is spreading less in region like Australia where the temperature is higher than the north planet?
There are rumors high temperature will block the virus...

Most of these viral outbreaks have not really been cured. They have merely been contained until the temperature became unfavourable for infection, and luckily when the temperature became favourable again the disease did not return.

[purfield]

I live in the Seattle area, and I'm currently working as a university researcher developing low cost diagnostic devices for infectious diseases.  Needless to say, I've been busy the past few weeks developing a COVID-19 diagnostic device.  It's a bit surreal trying to develop a tool to tackle an outbreak that is currently ravaging the city I live in.

[notsob]

For those who would like access to a good daily update

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[Bud]

I thought that the established belief was that the masks only reduce the infected from spreading the infection as wide, but don't really serve to protect the uninfected wearing one due to the various infection vectors?

I'm saving my N95 masks for drywall and masonry work

If the masks can reduce the risk, say, by just 1%, and you live in a high risk area, you will not give a mask to your elder mom and dad just because, you know, it is "ineffective" ?

We are only brave until Death will knock *our* door.

[angrybird]

For 1%?  I'll tell them to stay home.  1% is "in the noise floor" IMHO

If you start worrying about 1%, you'll never go anywhere and never get anything done!  Worry about real numbers.  20% seems significant.  10% maybe worrisome.  50% significantly worrisome?  99% is a definite decision maker 

[aargee]

I think that's fine if you want to take the risk. Travel from here puts you in situations where you have little choice to avoid infection.
Metal tubes filled with people or cruise ships with a ready source of captive hosts from the virus point of view.
Sure, you will survive but then there's the price of quarantine if you're found to have it, nothing better than getting a few days into the trip of a lifetime to find you are put under house arrest or hospitalised for weeks and then they close the borders.
I think a bigger question is the medium to long term effects, when people are financially impacted and the roll on effect as they stop spending money. This can affect the economy as a whole.

[angrybird]

Well, I guess we will see since I got tickets a few days ago and will be all over two different asian regions in the coming months.  Not china, though

In the USA there won't be any "house arrest" for illnesses like this, they literally let HIV/Hepatitis/etc infected drug addicts shoot up in the streets in many cities now.  I'm sure people will be asked to voluntarily "isolate", but for as low as the mortality rate is looking for this illness, unless it suddently gets worse I wouldn't even expect many people to maintain this isolation.  From the numbers right now, it really doesn't look like a big deal.

[VK3DRB]

I love my trips to this country so very much.

Right know you could have a luxury room at the Canal Grande in Venice for about 80€, regular price before COVID19 was 253€.

Its a great time for long distance flights. Its easy to get a whole row to yourself, and sleep in comfort.

You can turn fear into an advantage.
 
My wife took a flight to Europe via Emirates on September 11, 2002... exactly one year to the day after the WTC terrorist attack. The plane was pretty much empty because of irrational hysteria that there was a higher risk that the Muslims would blow up one of their own aeroplanes. Terrific flight, excellent service, nothing more safer and she had a whole row of seats to lie down and sleep on.

A few days after the WHO announces COVID-19 is a pandemic, I will be buying stocks, after all the sheep think the end is nigh. Within three years, I will stand to make handsome profit far exceeding crappy bank interest rates... if I survive that is .

(Did you hear about the IRA terrorist who tried to blow up a bus? He burnt his lips on the exhaust pipe.)

[BravoV]

   ->  Coronavirus fraud: UK victims lose 800,000 pounds in scams

[Bud]

one victim paying 15,000 pounds for masks that never arrived

Well, that "victim" was not going to use that many masks for himself and family, clearly he had a plan to become rich by reselling them. Someone outsmarted him.

[EEVblog]

They just cancelled SXSW
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/sxsw-cancelled-due-to-coronavirus.html
There could probably be an entire thread just devoted to stuff that's going to get shut own due to this.

[syau]

Voluntary work from home last month, co-workers found things to be more productive as don’t need 3 hrs transport from home everyday nor disruption from boss.

Leadership not feeling comfortable b’cos they found only themselves in the office but no others 

[Red Squirrel]

My network surveillance job could 100% be done from home if I had a chance to do a proper setup. (3x 4k monitors needed for the real estate) but my company is against the idea of people working from home.   

That said, they actually ARE looking into the potential of people working from home if they had to because of an outbreak.  We're in a rather low risk area but they just want to get their ducks in a row.   Oddly enough our whole office just got some kind of nasty virus, including myself.  Some kind of sore throat and coughing virus with intense fever, was pretty nasty.  Obviously not deadly like covid-19 but it's a grim reminder just how fast stuff like that can happen and spread.

[angrybird]

My network surveillance job could 100% be done from home if I had a chance to do a proper setup. (3x 4k monitors needed for the real estate) but my company is against the idea of people working from home.   

That said, they actually ARE looking into the potential of people working from home if they had to because of an outbreak.  We're in a rather low risk area but they just want to get their ducks in a row.   Oddly enough our whole office just got some kind of nasty virus, including myself.  Some kind of sore throat and coughing virus with intense fever, was pretty nasty.  Obviously not deadly like covid-19 but it's a grim reminder just how fast stuff like that can happen and spread.

I was in Ottawa about a month ago and I'll bet I got that exact same sickness!  Started with a sore throat, rapidly moved to intense fever with the worst headache I've had in a long time, and the headache lasted 2 days even with meds.  Turned into horrible coughing, I didn't even sleep one night because I couldn't stop coughing.  I felt like total crap for a week and didn't feel completely back to normal until 2 weeks later!!!

[bd139]

We had that as well. Took out half the company. No casualties. Fortunately I was working from home so not affected. I suspect this is about as bad as covid-2019 would be.

I’m going shopping in a rather busy place today. Interested to see how busy it is compared to normal.

[Bark]

No casualties?  You forget to mention the thousands of kleenex that gave their lives to save you

[coppice]

No casualties?  You forget to mention the thousands of kleenex that gave their lives to save you

The kleenex were already dead. It was poor defenceless trees who gave their lives.

[bd139]

We'll be giving our juice back to the trees one day. They always win.